By STEPHANIE ZACHAREK June 19, 2014

If the clothes of Yves Saint Laurent were groundbreaking, the designer's mystique was as subtle as the curve of an invisibly molded sleeve. Those who have picked up just a little Saint Laurent lore may know about his beginnings at the House of Dior in the late 1950s, and his subsequent firing, in 1960, as he lay in a French military hospital after suffering a post-conscription nervous breakdown. With the help of Pierre Bergé—played here by Guillaume Gallienne—his partner in both life (until 1980) and in business (until the designer's death in 2008), he launched his own house and forever changed the way women dress. He popularized the tuxedo as a garment for modern women; he brought couture vision to the more democratic world of ready-to-wear. In the late '60s and early '70s he took a lot of pills and dallied with the wrong boys. Until his death, he had a series of French bulldogs, all named Moujik, a parade of wagging rumps and snuffling noses that bore witness to the creation of some of the most supple, unassumingly elegant clothes of... More >>>